


the future freaks me out

by shoemaster



Category: Bruno and Boots (Movies)
Genre: M/M, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-17
Updated: 2019-12-17
Packaged: 2021-02-26 23:27:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,371
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21827341
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shoemaster/pseuds/shoemaster
Summary: These Boots are made for time travel
Relationships: Boots O'Neal/Bruno Walton
Comments: 7
Kudos: 48
Collections: Yuletide 2019





	the future freaks me out

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Aurum](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aurum/gifts).



> Happy yuletide, Aurum! I was thrilled by this assignment.
> 
> Title courtesy of Motion City Soundtrack

Boots knew exactly why Bruno said to meet him by the cannon once the Fish’s retirement party started to wind down - he spent all four years of their long distance relationship during university pointing out all the time they’d wasted back at the Hall - but what he didn’t know is what that bright flash of light had to do with anything. 

He stumbled back, squeezing his eyes shut and kind of tripped over the pedestal. He landed on some crunching leaves, which was odd, because it was June and he could have sworn there were flowers there a minute ago. But from this angle he could see that someone had finally patched up that chip in the cement that had resulted from their Easter escapade in grade twelve with Wilbur, a handful of ping pong balls and a surprising number of wild rabbits.

“Boots, buddy, you gotta be more careful You can’t hurt yourself before the meet with York next weekend,” Bruno said, offering him a hand up. 

“Wow,” Boots laughed and got to his feet, “really leaning into that -”

He stopped when he got a good look at Bruno, decked out in maroon and grey. “Where did you get that jack-”

“What happened to your uniform?” Bruno asked. 

“Uh -”

Bruno leaned in closer and grabbed Boots’s face; out of habit, Boots let his hands fall to Bruno’s hips. “Boots, what happened to your _face_?”

“Bruno, what’s going on?” Boots asked. 

“I think I’d also like to know the answer to that question,” a familiar voice said from behind Bruno. 

Bruno spun around quickly, but Boots didn’t move, he was too busy staring at his seventeen year old self. 

“Boots!” Bruno said excitedly. “Look what I found!”

*

The younger Boots seemed struck dumb by the sight of his older self, but Bruno had about a million questions on his own. Boots struggled to answer them, because it wasn’t like he had done any of this on purpose, and Bruno’s theorizing that seemed to be based largely on whatever movies they’d last seen.

He had wanted some sort of proof from the future, but seemed disappointed when all Boots had on him was a few coins and a receipt from a corner store where he'd bought a sandwich on their way here.

"Ok, so probably no one is out there counterfeiting toonies with future dates on them," Bruno sighed. "But hey, it's nice to know Corky's is still open! Always liked their turkey subs. So I guess we're back to the first question, which is what are you doing here. And I guess the second question, how do we send you back? Not that it isn't great to have you here, but uh -"

Boots couldn't help grinning at him.

"What?"

"I just forgot how...you, you are," Boots said. He hadn't noticed Bruno mellowing in their old age, but apparently he had. He certainly wasn't prepared for Bruno's face to fall.

"You forgot? Oh my god, are we not _friends_ anymore? Oh god, you went off to school in BC and we drifted apart, didn't we? I know, I'll just make sure I get our mail all year and then it can't happen. It's foolproof, I bet if I -"

"Bruno. Bruno. Bruno." Boots tried to calmly stem the tide of Bruno's words, but eventually he slapped a hand over his mouth. Jesus, there was barely even a hint of stubble. "We're still friends."

Best friends with benefits, as Bruno sometimes sang unironically after a few too many rye and gingers. He pulled back and shoved both his hands in his pockets, the weight of his wedding band feeling out of place in this time.

"Oh."

“Can’t we just ask Elmer?” Boots sighed.

“We’re in high school, do you really think he’s been experimenting with time travel?” his younger self asked, speaking for the first time in the last half hour.

“It’s not like it’s a run of the mill thing for us now, in the future, whatever!” Boots said for what felt like the eighteenth time. “And I’m honestly out of other ideas.”

“Old Boots has a point,” Bruno said helpfully.

Boots tried not to bristle at being called _old_. Early thirties wasn’t old, he’d rather be in his thirties than seventeen again. As much fun as the Hall was, having to wear a uniform, go to class and stress about whether or not he’d be accepted to any of his top schools had put a damper on things. Not to mention spending every day trying to hide the fact that he was madly in love with Bruno.

No wonder his younger self had that pinched look. 

*

There was a series of odd clanking noises before Elmer opened his door. “Bruno, Boots, to what do I owe the pleasure?”

Boots realized Elmer couldn’t see him from his position beside the door and stepped closer. “That would be me.”

Elmer’s eyes widened. “Oh my!”

They were all ushered into Elmer’s room, and Boots took a moment to wonder where Elmer slept at night. If he slept at night. Bruno had been too traumatized by the slime mold to go into much detail of their room sharing.

“When I saw the spike in activity on the SETI monitoring, I have to admit, I was hoping for extra-terrestrial contact but this is also _fascinating_.”

“I think I’d prefer aliens,” Baby Boots muttered. 

No one else seemed to hear him. 

“So do you have any idea how long he’ll be here?” Bruno asked, even as he began poking at the multitude of Elmer’s mad scientist set ups. 

Boots gently grabbed his shoulder and steered him away from the more delicate equipment and the most volatile looking experiments. 

“Well, my specialty is more the physical sciences and less the theoretical, but I suppose I could attempt to determine if there were any foreshocks to the anomalous reading and see if it’s happening on any sort of a cyclical basis.”

“Thanks, Elmer, that'd be fantastic.”

Elmer was already settling into his computer chair and didn’t seem to notice as they headed towards the door.

*

“So I guess now we just wait?” Boots asked as they settled back into room 301. The vague deja vu he’d been feeling since he arrived on campus for the Fish’s retirement was amped to eleven in here.

“We should go see Cathy and Diane,” Bruno said.

“Why?” Baby Boots asked. “Do you think they know something about time travel that Elmer doesn’t?”

“Well, no, but come on. We can’t just leave them out of this. They’ll never believe it if they don’t see it for themselves and they’ll never forgive us if we don’t show them evidence of time travel!”

“I mean, I guess,” Baby Boots said. He didn’t look thrilled at the idea, but he seemed relieved to do anything other than sit around a room with Boots himself.

It wasn’t until both of them started reaching for their jackets that Boots had to protest. “Guys, no, I can’t. Can't they come here?” 

They both stared at him blankly.

“I can't be caught sneaking into their room! I'm thirty two years old. It’s one thing if a couple of teenage boys are sneaking into Miss Scrimmage’s, but if I do it, it'd be weird and creepy, and no one who catches me is going to care that I'm g-" Boots caught all the color leaving his younger self's face, "going to have injured myself trying to climb through their window."

And oh. Baby Boots wasn’t mad at him. He was afraid. Petrified by the look of it. 

“Going to injure myself trying to climb that tree,” he finished weakly. 

Bruno scoffed, “No way man, you’re in great shape.” He reached out and squeezed Boots’s arm, and Boots was over thirty years old, he and Bruno were _married_ , he wasn’t going to blush just because this underage version was inadvertently hitting on him. "You might be even more buff than Boots is."

“Um, thanks?” Boots said, shooting a look at Baby Boots, to see what he was making of this, but Baby Boots just stared at the floor. Jeez, Boots really needed to talk to him. Alone. “Bruno why don’t you go get Cathy and Diane and bring them back here?”

“No, that’s ok,” Baby Boots broke in. “I’ll go.”

“I really think -“

“I’m faster, anyway.”

“But Bruno has shortcuts -“

Baby Boots was out the door before Boots could even finish the sentence. 

“It doesn’t really matter,” Bruno said, dropping heavily on his bed. “It’s not like we’re in a rush.”

“Tell that to him,” Boots said. “He just lit out of here like the room was on fire.”

Bruno sighed. “Yeah, don’t take it personally or anything, I just think you freak him out a little bit.”

“You noticed that, too, huh?”

“Well, you know Boots, I guess, cause you _are_ him. Or were him?” Bruno shook off the insanity of their situation like it was a minor detail. “He’s overthinking everything trying to figure out life after graduation, and you show up with like, the ultimate cheat sheet, and this is a guy who won’t check the answers in the back of the textbook when he gets stuck in calculus. He won’t even take a shortcut or two in gym!”

“That’s because that shortcut would never have worked,” Boots pointed out.

“It would! You know Coach is easily distracted -”

“He’d have to be _really_ distracted to think we could suddenly run a lap in ninety seconds Bruno. Besides, if you don’t want to run all the laps, you can just hide behind the bleachers for ten minutes with Chris and Elmer.”

“Is that what they do?” Bruno asked.

“Yeah, they’ve been doing it since we were in grade nine and will keep doing it until you graduate.”

“That actually reminds me, I want to ask you something.”

Boots tried to play it off. “About Chris and Elmer?”

“It’s about Boots,” Bruno said, as though Boots couldn’t have guessed. 

“I'm not going to tell you anything he doesn’t want to tell you,” Boots said firmly, wishing his younger self could hear him, even though he was probably halfway across the lawn by now. “It wouldn’t be fair.”

“No, nothing like that.” Bruno picked up the tiny basketball from near his pillow and began tossing it back and forth between his hands. “He’s not mad at me, right?”

Boots opened his mouth to answer, but Bruno just kept going. “He said he didn’t mind about the thing in physics at the beginning of the year, but he’s been acting really weird and not talking to me, and he gets this pinched look on his face,” Bruno looked up at him, “a lot like that one, actually. Chris thinks he’s stressing about university but I don’t know.”

Boots didn’t have the faintest recollection of what happened in physics, but he could recall with painful accuracy the level of terror he felt most waking moments that he was going to say or do something that would tip Bruno off to his feelings and scare him away. But he couldn’t tell Bruno that; it wouldn’t be fair. “He’s not mad at you.”

Bruno let out a disbelieving huff.

“He is stressed, about university and the future and...stuff. I was never trying to shut you out,” Boots said. “I just had to work through it on my own before I could say any of it to you.”

“But I can’t fix it if you won’t tell me what’s wrong!” Bruno said, flinging himself back down against his pillow.

“Not everything can be solved with a plan or a committee, Bruno,” Boots said for what felt like the thousandth time in his life. It was probably too much to hope that he’d get through to _this_ Bruno and when he got back home, the Bruno he lived with would have internalized it. “Some feelings just have to be processed a little more than others before he can share them with you, but I promise he will share them eventually. You’re my best friend, and that’s not going to change, even if you do go to McGill.”

Boots sat up quickly, “I get into McGill? Really?” 

Boots swore at himself, but he couldn’t remember when the letters started arriving, and it had been June when he left his time. 

Bruno’s smile quickly dimmed anyway. “But you hate islands. You nearly had a panic attack when your parents took you to Aruba last Christmas.”

“I just get a little claustrophobic!” Boots protested.

“Even though the entire planet is technically made up of islands -“

“Much bigger ones.”

“- and you’re the best swimmer I know. And it’s not like the St Lawrence River is the Pacific Ocean.”

“I know, I know,” Boots said, putting his hands up in surrender. “But like I said, it doesn’t matter. You’re still the best friend I’ve ever had, and I promise, he will talk to you. When he’s ready.”

“You think so?” Bruno asked, his voice smaller than Boots could ever remember hearing.

“Bruno, I _know_ so,” Boots said, moving to sit next to him on the bed. He hesitated for just a moment before putting an arm around him. “If I could tell you, I would. But just trust me. Trust him.”

Bruno let out a long sigh and Boots could feel him slowly relax against him. “I do. I just -”

They were interrupted by the door slamming open and Cathy and Diane spilling into the room. 

“Holy crap.”

“It’s not that I didn’t believe you, Boots -”

“We just kind of thought that maybe you were finally having a mental break from all of the stress.”

Boots tried to casually untangle himself from Bruno, but Bruno didn’t seem in any hurry to move, even with Cathy, Diane and Baby Boots staring at them. “Hey guys. I guess no introductions are necessary.”

“This is like, Bruno’s best day ever,” Cathy said.

“Huh?” Baby Boots asked.

“His favorite person, in surround sound!” Diane said quickly. 

Boots coughed. “I mean, I’m not a clone.”

“That would be pretty cool though, like, we could have iron clad alibis with the Fish!” Bruno said excitedly.

“Let’s focus on the impossibility at hand,” Diane said. “Boots, what’s the future like.”

“I already told you,” Baby Boots cut in. “He’s not going to tell you anything.”

“I wasn’t asking about _my_ future,” Diane protested. “Just like. In general.”

“It’s fine?” Boots offered. “I don’t know, if I had known I was coming back here I would have prepared a cool list of examples or something.”

“Do the Leafs ever win the Cup?”

Boots didn’t even dignify that with a response.

“Well you’re here and you don’t seem awed by the luxuries of the past, so I’m going to assume that society hasn’t undergone a complete breakdown. That’s good!”

Boots blinked, but everyone else in the room seemed to relax at that. 

"So are you worried that by being here you're changing the timeline and the future you go back to will be completely unrecognizable?" Cathy asked as she picked through the fruit from the fridge. 

Everyone stared at her. 

"Well _now_ I am," Boots said. “I mean, I don’t know how much I can change on a global scale just hanging out here at the Hall. But I like my life and I hope it’s all there when I get back.”

“Oh!” Diane said suddenly. “You’re _married_!”

Baby Boots choked on the water he’d been sipping, and Cathy had to slap him on the back a couple of times while everyone suddenly stared at Boots’s hands, where he’d been fiddling with his wedding ring.

“Oh, uh, yeah. Almost three years now.”

“Were we invited?” Diane asked.

“To the wedding? Yeah, of course, we were all there, plus the rest of the guys. It was a really nice day,” Boots tried to keep his smile to a reasonable size. “Bruno cried.”

“I bet he did,” Cathy said, her eyes a bit too knowing.

“She must be something,” Bruno said. His smile looked genuine enough, but just a touch surprised.

Boots sighed, it was fun, taking an actual literal trip down memory lane, but this secret keeping was exhausting. He didn’t know how he got through it all the first time around, and now there was even more to it. And this Bruno was the same one he’d fallen in love with half a lifetime ago, but he didn’t love Boots _back_. Not the way Boots was used to.

Fortunately, a knock on the door prevented him from having to think of a response.

Baby Boots scrambled to his feet, looking equally relieved to have the conversation interrupted. “Hey Elmer.”

“Ah, Boots! I believe I have excellent news for Boots Prime.”

Boots preferred Boots Prime to Old Boots by a factor of at least a million.

“Oh yeah?” Baby Boots said, ushering Elmer into the room.

“I believe that whatever energy brought Boots Prime to us this afternoon will repeat itself tomorrow morning. After breakfast, most likely. By noon at the latest.” Elmer frowned. “I’m sorry I don’t have a more narrow window but I wasn’t anticipating having to use this data for this kind of precision calculation.”

Boots smiled, “It’s fine, Elmer. You were right, this is good news. We really appreciate your help.”

Elmer beamed, “You are most welcome. I am sorry that I haven’t had the chance to refit my room with a spare bed for you to sleep in for the night.”

“We’ll figure something out,” Boots said quickly. 

“We’ll leave you to it,” Diane said quickly, grabbing Cathy by the arm. “It was great to meet you, Old Boots. I guess we’ll see you again in a decade or so.”

“Bye, Old Boots!” Cathy said with a wave, jerking her arm away from Diane. “Come on, Elmer.”

With the room suddenly half as full as hit had been a minute ago, it should have seemed bigger. Instead, the air seemed heavy with the awkward topic of sleeping arrangements.

“I’m too old to sleep on the floor, guys.”

“You can share with me,” Boots offered easily.

“Uh -” It wasn’t like Boots wasn’t used to sharing with Bruno, it wouldn’t even be the first time they shared a twin bed, but that familiarity might not actually be a good thing in this situation. “Maybe Boots and I?”

“No way man, you’re both giants. It’d never work. If you want, Boots and I can share and you can have my bed.”

Oh. Oh that was worse. Boots tried to apologize to his younger self with just his eyebrows, but Baby Boots was just staring at the ceiling. 

“It’s not like we have to decide now, it’s not even that late,” Boots said. He thought about pointing out that one of them could take the floor, but if neither of them were going to, he wasn’t going to potentially make things weirder. 

*

Boots woke up early the next morning, after his hand smacked into the wall when he went reaching for Bruno in his sleep. A Bruno who wasn’t there, because Bruno was currently seventeen and sleeping in the bed across from him. It was honestly a familiar sight, though the angle was wrong, with Boots in Bruno’s bed this time. He’d always been an earlier riser than Bruno - not a difficult title to take - and he’d spent many mornings lying in bed trying to work up the nerve to say what he needed to.

In the end, it had taken the spectre of packing tape and boxes, the threat and potential comfort of never really seeing each other again before he’d finally stumbled through a confession that ended in them making out on Bruno’s bare mattress, the sheets already packed away.

Boots sighed and dragged himself out of the bed, he needed to shower before the entire dorm was awake and wanted to start the ‘so what’s the future like?’ game all over again.

It was a surprise to find Bruno already awake when he returned, especially with Baby Boots still asleep. “You’re up early,” Boots said.

“Yeah, I heard you get up, and then Boots was right here and my brain was all ‘remember how Boots time traveled?’ and that was the end of sleeping for me.” Bruno grinned at him, and it was the soft, early morning one Boots loved. “Besides, I wanna hang out with you while you’re still here.”

Boots hoped he could pass off his blush as residual heat from the shower. “I’m still going to be here,” he nodded to where Baby Boots was curled in on himself facing the wall.

“Yeah, but I have to wait like, twenty years to hang out with this you again.”

“It’s not _twenty_ years,” Boots protested.

Bruno winked. “Yeah, yeah. I’m going to take a shower, and then we can wake this lump up and see about breakfast.”

Boots let Baby Boots fake being asleep for another eight minutes after Bruno left to take a shower in the morning.

“Don’t you think we should talk?”

Baby Boots opened his eyes, but didn’t bother sitting up. “Why? You’re me, I’m you. You’re not going to tell me anything that I don’t know, because you won’t tell us anything about the future.”

Boots floundered for a second. “I kind of thought maybe _you_ would want to talk. Get some things off your chest. I won’t be staying much longer and nothing you can say would be that big of a surprise.”

“Like I said,” Baby Boots said, continuing to stare at the ceiling, “I don’t really see the point.”

Boots scrubbed a hand over his face. He needed more coffee for this conversation. "You know there's nothing you can tell Bruno that will make him stop being your best friend, right?"

He thought he might have seen a shoulder twitch of agreement.

"He _built you a pool_.”

“Hey guys!” Bruno came back through the door with a bang. “Old Boots, I got you a toothbrush from Chris. Do you know why that guy has so many?”

“Art projects,” both Bootses said at once. 

“Huh,” Bruno said. “So what’s the plan for the rest of the morning?”

“Well, Elmer wasn’t too clear on the window of opportunity, so I think the sooner we get back out to the cannons, the better?”

“Yeah, sounds great,” Baby Boots agreed quickly. “I’m just gonna take my turn in the shower.”

*

They hung around the cannons, not really sure what they were waiting for, and Boots could feel a steady thrum of a nervous energy under his skin. This nostalgia trip had been interesting, but he wanted to go _home_.

“So do you think time has passed in the future like it has here?” Bruno asked.

“I don’t know,” Boots shrugged. “It’s not like there’s a handbook on this stuff.”

“I hope it hasn’t been too long, or else your wife will be freaking out.”

“Mmmhm,” Boots said, noncommittally, looking steadfastly at the cannons. Should he be walking around them? Clockwise? Counterclockwise? What direction had he been coming from yesterday?

“Not his wife,” Baby Boots said suddenly.

Boots froze and stared at his younger self. This wasn’t how it was supposed to go. The thought terrified him even as he almost bounced with excitement. The next eight months of his life were going to be a lot easier than Boots remembered, if this was already out in the open. His gaze shot to Bruno, desperate to see his reaction.

The simple distracted, “Huh?” was a bit of a letdown, but Baby Boots didn’t let that stop him.

“Old Boots isn’t going home to his wife,” Baby Boots said, more firmly this time. “Because he’s gay. We’re gay. _I’m_ gay.”

It was Bruno’s turn to stare, and Boots could see the wheels turning in his head. It wasn’t really his place to say anything, but he couldn’t help it. “I told you he wasn’t mad at you.”

Baby Boots looked at him, his brow furrowed in confusion, but Bruno laughed. "You were really freaking me out, man. I thought..."

"What? Bruno, no. You're my best friend, I'd never -" Boots grabbed Bruno by the shoulders and looked him straight in the eye.

Boots didn't see it coming, he didn't think Baby Boots did either, and to be honest, he wasn't sure how much forewarning Bruno himself had, before he broke Baby Boots's grip just enough to push forward and kiss him.

It looked even more awkward than Boots remembered their first kiss being, months and months from now.

Baby Boots's hands grasped at the air for a brief second before coming to rest behind Bruno's neck, and a second later they gently separated again, their smiles too wide to make any other activities feasible.

Boots coughed softly to remind them of his presence. "Well. Now that _that's_ been taken care of..."

Baby Boots was blushing from the tips of his ears down to the neck of his sweater, and Bruno looked dangerously giddy.

“There’s nothing I can say here that doesn’t sound kind of creepy or self congratulatory in my head, but congrats guys. Enjoy the rest of your time at the Hall.”

“We’re gonna miss you,” Bruno said, stepping away from Baby Boots to throw his arms around Boots.

Boots hugged him back and laughed, “How? I’m right over there.” More seriously, he said, “If this goes right, I’m going to see you in a few minutes, but I’ll miss you, too.”

“Sorry for being kind of a jerk,” Baby Boots said. “I was just -”

“Man, I get it,” Boots said sincerely. “I really do.”

Bruno stepped back towards Baby Boots and grinned. “If that magic thing doesn’t happen soon, this is all going to feel very anticli-”

There was a flash of light, and suddenly Boots was on his ass again, and Bruno was nowhere in sight.

“Jeez, Boots, what are you doing down there?”

Boots twisted around and saw Bruno, _his_ Bruno who thought trying to grow a beard was a great idea, reaching down for him. “I - uh -”

“Come on, did you want to recreate our first kiss or not, you big cornball?”


End file.
